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  TERROR AT HELLHOLE

  TERROR AT HELLHOLE

  L. D. HENRY

  M. EVANS

  Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

  Published by M. Evans

  An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield

  4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

  www.rowman.com

  10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom

  Distributed by National Book Network

  Copyright © 1993 by Henry Schneider

  First paperback edition 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  The hardback edition of this book was previously cataloged by the Library of Congress as follows:

  L. D. Henry

  Terror at Hellhole / L. D. Henry.

  p. cm.—(An Evans novel of the West)

  1. Prisoners—Arizona—Yuma—Fiction 2. Prisons—Arizona—Yuma—Fiction 3. Yuma (Ariz.)—Fiction I. Title. II. Series.

  PS3558.E4977T4 1993

  813’.54—dc20

  93-37133

  ISBN: 978-0-87131-745-1 (cloth: alk. paper)

  ISBN: 978-1-59077-404-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)

  ISBN: 978-1-59077-405-2 (electronic)

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  To my wife Mary, for her patience during the many hours it took to write this book, and my sons David and Larry, for their help and encouragement.

  Contents

  Yuma Territorial Prison (1875–1909)

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Author’s Note

  Yuma Territorial Prison (1875–1909)

  Across the placid waters from California’s Mission Hill, at the confluence of the once turgid Colorado and Gila rivers, stands the grim remains of a walled structure known to early-day southwesterners, as Yuma Territorial Prison. But to those hardened inmates who were oppressed there, it was known as “Hellhole.”

  Within its rock and adobe walls, iron bars at one time caged the meanest assortment of murderers, gunmen, thieves, and cutthroats, on this side of hell.

  During the thirty-four-year span of an iron-disciplined operation, history records that there were one hundred and forty attempts to break out, but there was never any record of anyone ever trying to break into Yuma prison. That is, until terror struck at Hellhole....

  Prologue

  In the beginning God created heaven and earth, and the earth was without form and void. And water was everywhere, and a great darkness was upon the face of the water. And God made land and saw that it was good. Then God created man in His own image, male and female created He them. And when Adam and Eve sinned, they brought sickness and death unto mankind.

  But in the beginning, according to the Quechan Indians, when the water was everywhere and darkness covered the face of the earth, their two deities, Kwikumat and Blind Old Man, emerged from the dark waters.

  Kwikumat was not satisfied with a world only of water, so he created dry land; and Blind Old Man, who wanted people, created creatures out of mud, creatures with webbed feet and no fingers. Kwikumat became sorely displeased with these mud figures, so in anger, Blind Old Man went back into the dark waters, dispelling sickness and foul air as he sank odiously from sight, leaving illness and death in the world.

  Then Kwikumat reconsidered and decided to bring real people into being. He went to the sacred mountain of Avikwame (which is now Newberry Mountain, north of Needles, California). There he created Quechan Indians, and three other tribes. After this, he made white men and Mexicans on a lower order.

  Life was very carefree for the Quechan people because they had no negative thoughts about bodily functions, nor were they ashamed of sexual relations. Their inbred lack of concern for material wealth relieved them of all mental stress, which plagued the rest of mankind.

  Kwikumat had sexual relations with a woman of his creation and begat a son named Kumastamo, and a daughter, Frog. Later, Kwikumat sickened because his daughter Frog ate his excrement, but before he died he ordered his son to carry on the work of protecting the Quechan people.

  After he died, the people held a mourning ceremony that was to protect them from evil. Then feeling shielded from harm, and contrary to their teaching, the tribes began to scatter. The Quechans gravitated to the Yuma area and life became much more rigorous because they had left their sacred mountain.

  But these proud people soon developed an innate ability to ferret out food in order to survive the rigors of the merciless desert. And when a Federal prison was constructed at Yuma, they were able to utilize their inherent skills. Being immune to the searing heat and Spartan diet of this harsh land, they used uncanny tracking to return prison escapees for the bounties placed on them by law.

  Cunning and tenacious, they moved like wraiths pursuing criminals over wasteland terrain where not even footprints were evident. Southwestern history records the Quechans as the greatest of trackers.

  Chapter One

  The sun beat mercilessly down on the two Indians lying among the rocks at the edge of the ravine. Shimmering heat waves distorted the greasewood and cactus dotting the land surrounding them. High overhead, a hawk glided in the cloudless sky seeking a late breakfast morsel but it soon discarded the idea of waiting for the men to leave the water hole, knowing that anything fit for a meal would not approach the water while the men were there. With a final sweeping circle over the oasis, the hawk winged northward for the banks of the Gila River.

  Ho-Nas Good waved his hand to signal his companion to stay put while he advanced. From his position behind a mesquite bush, Palma nodded, watching Ho-Nas inch his way closer to the lip of the bank, his progress quieter than the tiny lizards moving between the rocks.

  In the ravine below he could see two men kneeling at the small water hole sheltered by scrub trees bravely growing through cracks in the rocky bank. The stocky man raised a clothbound canteen to his lips and gulped thirstily, and Ho-Nas could see that there were only three fingers on his left hand. Dark-skinned, his curly black hair hung in strands over his broad forehead. On the ground beside him lay a soiled, trail-worn hat and a 44—40 rifle.

  A large Negro, also on his knees, having just risen from ducking his head into the pool of water, straightened up to squint at the sun. With his shaven head, his wet scalp shone in the harsh sunlight when he picked up his rifle from the ground, then stood up to make way for the lone horse to drink.

  From the description given by the driver of the Yuma stagecoach just before he died, Ho-Nas recognized the man as Hedgemon Print. The report had been that two men, one of them a black giant, had robbed the stage just west of Tacna, on the road from Gila Bend. One of the passengers reported that he had picked up the wounded driver’s rifle and had fired after the fleeing bandits, wounding one of
the horses.

  Later, a dead horse had been found in the rocks five miles from the scene of the robbery and although great pains had been taken to hide their tracks, Ho-Nas was able to see that the two men had alternated riding the remaining horse for their getaway.

  Tracking the robbers to this water hole had been easy while his partner was busy leaving a prearranged trail of bits of paper dropped along the way for Sheriff Waringer to follow. Moving slower than the Indian trackers, the sheriff’s posse kept eyes alert for fresh dirt or disturbed rocks in case the thieves buried their loot along the way. This was an old ruse often used after a robbery so that if caught, no evidence would be found. Later the robbers could come back for the money when the opportunity arose.

  Ho-Nas, however, was certain that the stagecoach money still rested in the saddlebags of Print’s horse. He wagged a finger at his fellow tracker kneeling behind a small mesquite bush, signaling him to move out.

  Tall and square-faced, Palma nodded his understanding before pushing his sturdy body away from the bank in a slow backward crawl. Rising, he moved silently away. Out of earshot, Palma broke into a trot, his fence-post legs churned toward the rocky outcropping where the horses were hidden. Palma was forty-six years old and an opposite of Ho-Nas’s physical measurements, with massive shoulders and chest, thick-waisted and heavy-legged. He was also young Ho-Nas’s father-in-law.

  Not having the innate ability, nor the education possessed by his son-in-law, he chose to work with him as a tracker and followed his orders without complaint.

  After Palma had gone, Ho-Nas slid his rifle slowly forward so that he commanded a better view of the two outlaws relaxing by the water hole. He positioned the sun with a quick glance, knowing that his fellow tracker, Palma, should return with Sheriff Waringer and his posse within the hour. He settled down stoically for the wait in the hot sun, doubting that the outlaws would venture away from the water hole until late afternoon.

  His mind sorted through wanted posters trying to place the burly outlaw now sitting with the big Negro in the shade of a large rock. Then the name jumped into his mind—Jake Laustina. Three-fingered Jake, that’s who the brutish-looking man was. Recalling the bold-lettered poster he had once seen in Sheriff Waringer’s office, Laustina had been listed as an Austrian, a gunrunner, outlaw, and general badman with only three fingers on his left hand. Slope-shouldered and of medium height, he was two hundred and twenty pounds of bull-powered trouble.

  Print and Laustina, armed robbers and murderers, he thought, a good catch this pair would make. He and Palma were in for a fine reward, probably get enough money to last him and his new bride for a long time. A thin smile tugged at his lips but his dark eyes never wavered from the two men.

  Ho-Nas Good, generally called Honas by the white men who knew him, was tall, with a narrow face and hawklike features; there had been some Apache blood in his Quechan background. Young, he was not yet twenty-five years old, and he saw nothing wrong in joining the white man and his ways. Many of his people had fought against the invading white settlers, and as such, they were subject to sweltering in the summer and freezing in the winter, constantly forced to move between here and the Mexican border.

  With the coming of Fort Yuma on Mission Hill, high above the Colorado River on the California side, the feud between his people and the settlers became more pronounced, and soon most of the contentious Indians were driven further from the river. After 1854, all the Indian land on the south bank of the Gila River was given to the United States, and Honas’s people were scattered more than ever. Joining forces periodically for a raid on some secluded ranch or way station, only served to keep the Indians farther from the new way of life the white man was bringing, for the average Quechan’s culture was singularly uninterested in accumulating wealth or property. Nor did they care for pottery or weaving generally valued by southern Indian tribes.

  But Honas Good was not content to keep fighting and running with no place to lay his head. Tall and strong, even for a Quechan, he had no desire to be a leader among the tribe, but rather his dreams were invariably of worldly goods, dreams of wealth. And these dreams were strange, for Quechans ever since the early days had shunned wealth, but Honas was an unusual Quechan, and he envied the material comforts of the townspeople. He knew that a man could do much, even an Indian in the world of the white man, if he had money.

  He would adopt the white man’s ways and live as they did, vowing one day to buy his bride a real house, to take her from the mud-covered jacal, that hovel they shared in the desert with her father and mother. Here along the Gila River bank, life was easy for Honas and his father-in-law, for the two women planted their pumpkin and melon seeds, and, sometimes, wild maize. And when the river overflowed its banks, as it usually did each year, their crops were irrigated and they thrived.

  And from May until fall, before the crops were ready to harvest, they lived on mesquite beans, which the women made into a bread, and fish from the river. Sometimes he and Palma would forage on the desert, filling the strong canvas sack they habitually carried with wild seeds or small game they were able to snare.

  But Honas was not content with his present lot. Thinking back to the great drought that had swept his homeland, a drought so severe that not even their leader could produce rain or control the force or direction of the wind that blew the powdery dust choking the vegetation in the land, nor were any of their leaders able to acquire such power through a dream. He recalled how his toil-worn mother had taken him as a small boy and joined a caravan trekking over the mountains seeking food, until they reached San Sebastian. There he remained with the remnants of the tribe after she had died, to be educated by the kind friars at the mission until he became eighteen.

  Yet in spite of the friars’ teachings, he retained much of his native beliefs and these Quechan ways were still strong within him and his dreams frequently were about returning to his homeland. And when a particularly realistic dream moved him, the young Quechan bid the friars good-bye, and he struck eastward to the Colorado River, then south to Yuma.

  Tom between his Quechan heritage and his desire for a better life, he made his choice, asking Palma to work with him. He would willingly assist the white man in his silly game of crime and punishment for there was money to be earned at the high-walled prison and at the sheriff’s office. Tracking down outlaws or bringing back escapees for the prison superintendent paid well, which was more pay than an Indian could earn in months of backbreaking work. Escapees usually left a path that was easy for a Quechan to follow.

  And Honas almost always brought back his prisoners alive, which pleased the authorities. Bringing in live prisoners pleased Honas, too, not that he had a soft spot in his heart for escapees because of his training, but a live prisoner could walk while a dead one had to be buried or carried.

  Hearing the raucous snort from one of the bandits at the water hole below, Honas’s mind returned to his work. He eyed the sun again, guessing that a half hour had elapsed since Palma had gone back for the posse. He lay quietly, stoically, not taking his eyes from the two outlaws lounging in the shade of the brush surrounding the pool, listening to them argue with mild interest, even though the nearness of water caused his lips to tighten.

  “Dammit, now I says we better head up to Ehrenburg. We kin cross the Gila an’ be gone befo’ that posse gits back this way,” Print said, waving a long arm in the air. “Right now, I’ll bet they’s coverin’ the water holes along Coyote Wash, then they’ll go to the Tinajas befo’ they start up here on the Gila.”

  A tight grin twisted Honas’s lips because the big man was right, that’s where the posse was heading; Palma was trying to catch up and bring them back. Too bad, he laughed to himself, that Print didn’t know how an Indian figured things, didn’t know that even now a Quechan was listening to him brag, watching his every move.

  “Hell, Print, yore just guessin’ that’s how they’ll go,” Jake Laustina sneered. “Let’s make a run for Mexico so we kin spend some o
f this money.”

  “Guessin’ or not,” Print growled, “that’s what I’d do if I was leadin’ that posse—cut off the water hole routes to Mexico first. I knows this land better’n anybody!”

  “Anybody? Shee-it, them Quechans could find yuh even if they was blindfolded on a pitch-black night,” Laustina growled. “But have it yore way.”

  “You’re damn right, ’specially since I’ve got the only horse,” Print snapped, eyeing his burly companion to see if there would be any further dissent. “All right then, we’ll cross the Gila and head northwest until we reach the Colorado, then we’ll follow it up to Ehrensburg.”

  “Hell, let’s rest our ass for another hour,” Laustina growled resignedly. “Especially if we got as much time as you say. With a little rest, we can go anywhere yuh say for all I give a damn!”

  Print nodded, satisfied that Laustina had agreed. “They ain’t no water ’tween here an’ Ehrensburg so we gotta stay near the rivers.”

  Honas permitted his lip to tug into the semblance of a grin. Maybe, just maybe, he thought, the big man would get his wish. He’d stay near the rivers for a long time because the Territorial Prison at Yuma was located on a rocky hill at the confluence of the Colorado and the Gila rivers.

  Behind him, he heard a faint sound and slowly turning his head, he was able to see Palma with six men cautiously spreading out to flank both sides of the ravine. Outnumbered and surrounded as they were, Honas knew that the two bandits would have to surrender or die resisting capture hopelessly. Neither of the men looked that foolish, and Sheriff Waringer was a man who would force just such an issue.

  When all his men had crawled to a position at the edge of the ravine, the lawman gave a signal and the posse men stood up, their rifles aimed down at the two surprised outlaws resting at the water hole.